The kosher majority.

THE KOSHER MAJORITY

A FUNDAMENTALIST leader made thefollowing observation during the 1984 presidential campaign:

The national Democratic Party has beentaken over by our enemies: the wealthy and powerful anti-family radicals--including organized and militant homosexual and lesbian leaders and feminist extremists, . . . Marxist-revolution sympathizers, irreligious educators, and affluent, snobbish social engineers who despise virtually everything we stand for.

One almost involuntarily forms a mentalimage of the speaker: "Praise the Lord!'--a gentle Southern drawl and a white polyester suit.

A mistaken impression, this. Thevoice belongs to Avigdor Miller, a highly respected Orthodox rabbi and leader of Brooklyn's Congregation Bais Yisroel. Without fanfare, Orthodox Jewry has become a stronghold of conservative sentiment, particularly on social issues.

The Right has traditionally had ahard time attracting Jewish voters. In 1984, Ronald Reagan carried less than 40 per cent of the Jewish vote, despite the anti-Semitism of Jesse Jackson and the failure of the Democratic Party to repudiate him. But there is a kosher lining in this Hebraic cloud. In that same election, the most conservative President in memory carried 66 per cent of the vote in Brooklyn's heavily Hasidic Boro Park, while Yehuda Levin, a young Orthodox rabbi, ran a spirited campaign against ultraliberal congressman Stephen Solarz.

Ironically, where secular Jews andthe Right have the least in common --social issues--Orthodoxy and conservatism are in substantial accord. Moreover, on a broad range of social concerns, the Orthodox are becoming increasingly active. Last spring, when New York City passed a hotly contested gay-rights ordinance, the principal opponents of the measure were the Archdiocese of New York and leaders of the city's Orthodox community.

Orthodoxy's appeal is growing. Theresurgence is due both to demographics and to a spiritual renaissance within American Jewry. In the December 1985 issue of Young Israel Viewpoint, a prominent Orthodox publication, editor Yaakov Kornreich observes: "With the numerical growth of the Orthodox community, our leaders now have the opportunity and the inescapable responsibility to apply our Torah principles . . . to the broader spectrum of issues facing American society.'

For Torah-observant Jews, child-bearingis a mitzvah (duty). Secular Jews intermarry, have abortions, and, on average, raise two children per household. Orthodox Jews often have large families, and their yeshiva-educated progeny stay faithful to tradition. The growth of Jewish day schools reflects this religious regeneration. In 1945 there were fewer than fifty such institutions. By 1983, 540 Jewish schools were educating 110,000 students.

Jews from non-observant familieswho return to Orthodoxy are called baal teshuva. These returnees are encouraged by Jerusalem's Ohr Sameah Yeshiva and outreach yeshivot in this country such as Chicago's Yigal Torah, which have trained thousands of American Jews in the intricacies of Jewish theology and ritual observance. The process is also aided by the lowkey proselytizing of the Lubavitcher Hasidic movement, which operates its habad houses at college campuses across the country. The convergence of these trends, sociologists predict, will give the Orthodox majority status among American Jews early in the next century.

Orthodoxy is traditionally the leastpolitical branch of Judaism--a habit from the ghetto days, when it was considered unwise to meddle in the affairs of Gentiles--but the growing number of the Orthodox is creating a new confidence. Like the once-dormant Protestant fundamentalists, the Orthodox have been animated primarily by moral issues.

REACTING TO the suggestion thatabortion is a "Catholic concern,' Agudath Israel, a social-service organization, which acts as the lobbying arm of Orthodox Judaism, announced: "Jewish law teaches that all human life is sacred. The life of a fetus has status and dignity. Agudath Israel supports legislation that protects fetal life by restricting the availability of abortion on demand.'

The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations(UOJC) adds that "abortion is not a private matter between a woman and her physician. . . . It infringes upon the most fundamental right of a third party--that of the unborn child. For Jews, fetal life is inviolate unless continuation of the pregnancy poses a serious threat to the life of the mother.'

Long active in the anti-abortionmovement, Rabbi Yehuda Levin was the Right-to-Life candidate for mayor of New York City in 1985.

While secular and Reform Jewishgroups are outspoken in their opposition to prayer in public schools, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, leader of the Lubavitcher Hasids, has a different perspective: "If we want the next generation of children to grow up as productive, moral human beings, they must be given the opportunity, during school hours, to meditate on matters of vital importance--their purpose in life, and the belief in the Creator and Ruler of the World.'

Though the rebbe's opinion isn'tshared by all of Orthodoxy (the UOJC opposes public-school devotions, fearing discrimination against non-Christians), others would go beyond silent prayer. Agudath Israel, for example, "has long advocated a strengthening of religious values in American society and believes that structural non-denominational prayer in the public schools can contribute to that ideal.'

On the question of homosexuality,the UOJC states that "the Jewish religious tradition deems homosexual relations as a serious offense, proscribed by Biblical injunction.' Gay rights "represents an attack on the morality of a society whose laws are designed to protect and preserve family, morality, marriage, and procreation,' cautions Rabbi Pinchas Stolper, the UOJC's executive vice president.

Agudath Israel's National JewishCommission on Law and Public Affairs submitted an amicus curiae brief supporting Georgetown University when the Catholic school was sued for refusing to grant official status to a gay student association.

Orthodoxy is rooted in a three-thousand-year-oldtradition. Said Benjamin Disraeli, "[The Jews] are the trustees of tradition, and conservators of the religious element.' Russell Kirk observes in The Conservative Mind that "the Jewish radical is an anomaly: The traditions of race and religion, the Jewish devotion to family, old usage, and spiritual continuity, all incline the Jew toward conservatism.'

In his 1985 book The Utopian Dilemma:American Judaism and Public Policy, Murray Friedman quotes Rabbi Seymour Siegel of the Jewish Theological Seminary, who believes "that the Jewish tradition has been profoundly misunderstood. It is, he argues, basically conservative. Contemporary liberalism has "a tendency to favor liberty over order,' whereas Judaism has a high esteem for the virtue of order. . . . Liberalism has "a tendency to favor universal characteristics over particularist ones . . . [Liberals] therefore tend to downgrade nationalism, ethnic self-identification (except for blacks) and endogamy.'' Judaism, as a religion and a people, requires a strong sense of identity and a certain separateness for its very survival.

The Orthodox faithful spend muchof their lives studying sacred texts, endeavoring to understand their applicability to the world about them. Orthodoxy is a religion that shuns the leveling instinct, venerates the past, and teaches modesty and strict sexual morality. Torah Judaism is a way of life. Based on a series of divine commandments (613 in all) and rabbinical elucidations, it seeks to regulate every aspect of life. The goal is to imbue mundane existence with holiness, to elevate the individual above his animal appetites to a spiritual plane. Thus a strict code guides the religious Jew in his business affairs, interpersonal relationships, sexual conduct, and even nourishment. There are blessings for almost every act, from rising in the morning to eating the first fruit of the season. The objective is to make the Jew cognizant of his dependence on the Creator and to cultivate a sense of gratitude for divine beneficence.

The leitmotif of traditional Judaismis self-control. "You shall not follow your own heart, after which you used to go astray,' the Torah enjoins. It should hardly come as a surprise that someone imbued with this ethos would be disturbed by the excesses of today's secular society.

In the battle with militant secularism,collectivism, and Times Square culture, conservatives have a staunch ally in the Torah community. After all, it was the ancient Jews who gave the West its ethical code. How fitting, then, that their descendants are now joining the fight for the preservation and extension of that sacred legacy.